Quincy's Jimmy Liang adding to his restaurant empire

Chris Burrell The Patriot Ledger @Burrell_Ledger

Saturday

Sep 20, 2014 at 6:00 AM

It’s no wonder Jimmy Liang is wearing sneakers to work, even if they are paired with gray dress pants and a necktie. Liang, a chef-restaurateur raised in Quincy, is on a run, in the midst of opening his third new restaurant in nine months.

“I love my Chucks,” said Liang, when asked about his Converse high-tops as he strode the North Quincy neighborhood he grew up in.

Three of Liang’s restaurants now dominate the corner of Hancock Street and Billings Road, but the 37-year-old easily remembers the days before there was such a deep Jimmy Liang imprint on this section of North Quincy.

“It was so different then. We used to call it Norfolk Downs. Nobody calls it that now,” he said as he pointed to buildings that two decades ago still housed a hardware store, a pharmacy and an arts and crafts shop.

“I’d help my parents pay their bills in the pharmacy,” he said.

One of his newest restaurants, YoCha, opened in late 2013 and now anchors that northeastern corner. On a recent muggy Thursday, it was filling up with an afterschool crowd of teenagers, many of them clutching history and math textbooks.

YoCha’s niche is aimed right at your sweet tooth, selling frozen yogurt and dessert soups, while B-café, across the street, offers up the savory side of Japanese fast-food: sushi and noodles.

“It’s a good alternative to McDonald’s,” said Liang. “I figured this would be a cool place for kids to come. And with reasonable prices, kids can afford it.”

Liang was still a teenager – 19 – when he and business partner Peter Tse opened their first restaurant, Fuji 698, Quincy’s first Japanese restaurant. That morphed into Fuji 1546 on the other end of Hancock Street. Liang and Tse became best friends when they were fifth graders at the Parker Elementary School and are still running the show, nearly 20 years later. Tse also sports the Chuck Taylor kicks as part of his work garb.

Liang feels very rooted in his hometown and even protective of it, recoiling when he hears people say Quincy is becoming the next Chinatown.

“Chinatown just has this negative connotation to it. They think dirty and smelly. My family lived in Chinatown, and to come to Quincy, that was very important to my grandfather that his grandchildren came here, that they got out of Chinatown,” said Liang.

But Liang is stretching those roots beyond the city borders and expanding much of his restaurant dynasty to the north – in Cambridge and Somerville.

Shabu & Mein just opened up this summer in Kendall Square, a fusion of Japanese with Korean, Thai and Vietnamese flavors and options.

The rich broth in his ramen soup takes 32 hours to prepare, said Liang, and features a touch you don’t find in most bowls of ramen – a soft-boiled egg.

The egg has steeped in a mixture of soy sauce and Japanese rice wine “for 12 hours, no longer, no less,” said Liang with the meticulousness of a chef.

A few miles away, Liang’s third new restaurant is still under construction at the Assembly Square mall in Somerville. Amidst the whirr of power saws and the ring of hammers, Liang checks in with his older brother John, the general contractor for all the company’s projects.

“It was just a pile of rubble in July,” said Liang, smiling and beaming with confidence that this newest member of the Fuji family will be born inside of three weeks. Next door to Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th, this upscale branch of Fuji will feature spicy Szechuan fare and a banquet-sized sushi bar.

“I’m the only one allowed to do Asian food in this complex,” he said as he walked around the new shopping center near the Mystic River and a brand new MBTA station.

Not surprisingly, Liang is already cooking up more ideas like a French-Asian inspired bakery in Cambridge.

Liang will help man the sushi table at the newest Fuji, but he pitches in at all levels.

“We had a staffing issue, and I was over at Shabu & Mein washing dishes,” he said. “There’s not too much monotony around here.”

Follow Chris Burrell on Twitter @Burrell_Ledger.

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